Fox News: Rice calls for continued pressures on Syria
Syria-USA, Politics, 9/16/2005

The US secretary of state Condaleezza Rice called on Thursday on the international community to pressure Syria "because it might have known of what had taken place in Lebanon," in remarks to the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri.

Rice said in an interview with Fox News network, replying to a question on whether Syria had actually got out of Lebanon, that the Syrian miltary forces, got out in open, but that she still felt the presence of the Syrian hand. Rice said the detention of Lebanese security officials who were allied with Syria, in the course of the UN investigation of the Rafiq al-Hariri death investigation, creates a new dynamism in the country.

Rice stressed that "Syria is very much isolated at the international level, basically because of Lebanon," but also because of Iraq. She explained that: the Syrians disappoint the hopes of the Iraqi people. Their activities, literally help in killing the Iraqi people. They disappoint the hopes of the Palestinians through supporting the Palestinian rejection groups which create problems to Mahmoud Abbas.

Rice warned Syria from "this game" in remarks to that what she called Syrian support to the armed groups in Iraq. She said these groups will head towards Damascus, if the US is obliged to leave Iraq, the same as happened with Pakistan in the Afghani issues.

Rice stressed that the Syrians are able to halt what she called the sneaking of terrorist members via its borders to Iraq. She explained "when they wanted to stop trade with Lebanon they stopped 47% of the Lebanese trade. They did that very easily, they can control their borders."

Previous Stories:
  Reactions to US pressure on Syria   (9/15/2005)
  Al-Assad talks about unjustified threats to Syria   (9/15/2005)
  Syria rejects US accusations on Iraq as baseless   (9/14/2005)

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